


shame: a parasite, pity: a monster

by crowteeths



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Depressing, Fist Fights, Gen, Mild Gore, sorta alternate universe???, sorta canon???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 19:57:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15032102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowteeths/pseuds/crowteeths
Summary: just a short one-shot thing of Adam and Gansey at a congress party, but things don't go so smoothly for Adam, and he ends up punching both the wall and Gansey's face repeatedly. my take on how the congress party in the book could've gone(and thank god it didn't).





	shame: a parasite, pity: a monster

He puts on his best smile for the day: one part gum and three parts teeth. He says his greetings and shakes those hands and blinks at the business cards being handed to him, nods graciously to the "Oh, we’ve got young blood entering the field!" and the "Are you Gansey’s friend? He’s such a good boy— his mother hosts this party, you know, she's been doing this for so many years!" and tightens his tie before he answers. He’s in a world of symphonies and orchestras with long Russian names. He’s in a world of expensive cheeses and hungry eyes, and he feels an acute sense of not belonging. He doesn’t call it drowning (though it feels so much like it) because that would be uncouth of him. A soon-to-be-written rags-to-riches story is printed on the backs of his eyelids.

Oh, Adam, you’ve grown into such a handsome man! He bows at the compliment, even though the mouth that it came from was unfamiliar. Words fly over the banquet table, back and forth, one polite sentence after another. Occasionally, there’s a remark edged with teeth, (Hey, my cousin had to live in a trailer park too, I understand,) but conversation easily swells to fill the awkward scrape. 

Gansey’s mother, a wonderful monster with terrifying eyes, has experience in the art of talking loud enough so that the others around her can hear and making herself be heard but not be seen. Someone wrests a gilded platter into his hands; he smiles into his champagne flute and says thank you. So humble! So charming! My, how times have changed! Someone fervently agrees on the other side of the table with their own exclamation points. The overhead chandelier snarls at his eyes but he swallows his wince and pastes on a wide grin. His hand shakes when he brings it up for a toast, but it is so bright. No one sees the tremble in his slender fingers, or no one wants to care. They rise from their chairs, and the light catches on their teeth. To music, to the future, to the terrifying unknown of What Comes Next.

(He tries to ignore that the existence of What Comes Next was largely made possible by Gansey.)

He wonders if they can see the true him beneath the neat suit that he borrowed from a richer friend, the smile, the nods. He wonders if they can see the scared boy who was not so much a gentleman as he was an imposter. Adam is ready to curl in on himself like a tree with no heart, a dead tree which snaps under the weight of a small child, all black and crumbling inside, its back bowed like someone in furious prayer. This is not me, he thinks. I don’t belong. A flash of envy and hatred rips through him for Gansey. He had grown up with a silver, no, golden spoon in his mouth. He could go to the store and buy whatever normal, fanciful young adults did and pass his credit card through the machine without worrying, without digging through his pockets for loose change that he didn’t have. 

Adam had his father’s eyes and his quick temper. There was no in-between from his passive, shying guise and his monstrous, incendiary anger. It starts in his chest and tears through him. He barely manages to hold it in as he stalks up to Gansey. He’s amid a sea of chattering, lively guests in equally beautiful attire, and Gansey is the magnificent jewel in the centre. Adam wants to destroy it all. For a moment, their eyes meet. At first, Gansey smiles, and waves away the crowd of people around him. They dissolve into the main crowd. Then Gansey sees the poorly hidden ire in Adam’s eyes, the clenched fists. Gansey’s smile almost disappears.  
Their conversation goes something like this:

“Take me away from here.” (Adam can barely talk. He feels as if he’s being choked.)

“What do you mean? You need this job. What, are you gonna leave because you feel a bit bad?” (Gansey starts to feign polite innocence, but his questions start to grow sharp edges.)

“I don’t want to—I can't be here any longer, Gansey. I can take another crappy part-time job. Whatever.” (How would Gansey understand the feeling inside of him, a feeling that writhed inside of your stomach and dug its talons up, up, up, through the esophagus and into the brain?)

“Don’t tell me you’re giving up like this.”

Adam points a finger at Gansey. By this time, the party is relatively hushed. There is only the sound of many eyes, all turning in their sockets.

“You—YOU. YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING.” 

It’s all a bit of a blur. Adam only recollects himself turning over and punching the wall. It caves in like an eggshell, exhales a puff of sawdust. He leaves a dark crater surrounded by splintered purple parchment. He watches the blood slowly trickle down the valleys and hills of his fist with faraway eyes. Then he does the same thing multiple times in the darkening face of his only friend. He remembers how the guests went silent, and how Gansey’s mother screamed. He also remembers running, running out of that mansion, finding his crappy bike near the back and racing to his double-wide trailer. Him breathing harshly as he locks the door. His mother coming out of the darkness of the kitchen only to see her pathetic son in tatters and blood on his fists, still clenched.

“I’ve left it,” he says. “I haven’t…got it,” he says. “I’m okay, though. I’m fine.” Lying through your teeth is so easy when you’ve been doing it for the past three hours over and over. He does not reflect on the fact that he’s lost his only chance to break into a world of money and power and champagne flutes. He does not reflect on the fact that he’s ruined his reputation and has made himself known as “the delinquent who punched a perfectly fine young man.” He does not reflect on the fact that he’s likely lost his only friend because that would make him go mad.

Adam can’t sleep because his knuckles still hurt and because he’s busy thinking of what might’ve been. The sultry summer night doesn’t give him rest. When he finally sleeps its looking at the caved in face of Gansey, his beautiful face splintered and broken into a million gnarled pieces.


End file.
